Get the latest tech news

Cheap, outsourced labour in Africa is shaping AI English


Workers in Africa have been exploited first by being paid a pittance to help make chatbots, then by having their own words become AI-ese. Plus, new AI gadgets are coming for your smartphones

It is a truly mammoth work of statistics, taking a dataset that seems to close to “every piece of written English on the internet” and using it to create a gigantic glob of data that spits out the next word in a sentence. Calling people a “bot” is already a schoolyard insult (ask your kids; it’s a Fortnite thing); how much worse will it get when a significant chunk of humanity sounds like the AI systems they were paid to train? While phones have evolved into all-encompassing personal entertainment devices in recent years, r1 is positioned as a standalone hardware portal to cut through distractions and help users handle their everyday digital tasks smarter, more efficiently, and more delightfully.

Get the Android app

Or read this on r/technology

Read more on:

Photo of Africa

Africa

Photo of labour

labour

Photo of techscape

techscape

Related news:

News photo

Africa’s Biggest Mobile Carrier Boosts Huawei Ties With Tech Lab

News photo

Meta tests AI on WhatsApp and Instagram users in India and parts of Africa

News photo

Pula raises $20M Series B to provide agricultural insurance to farmers in Africa, Asia and LatAm